


Deleted Scenes Up On The Clouded Mountain

by ErinPtah



Series: Republic of Heaven Community Radio [5]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Deleted Scenes, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:20:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 10,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3835051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For anyone who can't get enough of <a href="http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/205307.html#contents">the HDM AU</a>: here is some more of that thing. Including rejected plot twists, missing scenes, and cut-for-time jokes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Funding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rejected twist from all the way back in [chapter 28](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1062757/chapters/2943223) of He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian. If the Atal lenses hadn't been kept a secret within the Night Vale team....

"All of you are extremely generous, and we couldn't be happier," says Henriette. "And, speaking of our research...we'd like to show you something else we've been working on."

"I promise, Dr. Gaillard, there's no need to impress us further!" exclaims the School of Arts and Experimental TheologyDean. "What you've done already is tremendous, just tremendous."

"No, no, we must insist," says Köhler. "This demonstration, it is necessary that it be visual."

"It'll be fun to watch, don't worry," adds Carlos.

"All right, sure," says Dr. Feldt. "Let's see it."

They still haven't managed to hack together anything expensive for the electrum lenses. These two are held in another short cardboard tube patched with duct tape, and suspended in the air by a piece of string tied to the clamp of a retort stand filched from the chemistry cabinet.

Carlos slides the whole setup against the table so it hangs in front of the lens of their webcam.

Digitized, the Rusakov particles lose a lot of the definition they have to the human eye. The camera translates them into bright pixels that obscure the objects they drift in front of, and the subtlety of their motion gets flattened; Carlos can barely pick out meaningful intention at all in the digital version, and wouldn't even think to look if he hadn't seen it in real life.

They're still far clearer than film developed with the Asriel emulsion. And they're visible in realtime.

Henriette grins into the camera. Carlos gives it a little wave. Even Köhler — can it be? — has a discernible twinkle in his eyes.

In the office on the other side of the continent, jaws drop.

"I take it back," says the Lyall & Cole grant manager. "Consider yourselves funded."


	2. Lazy Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Original version of the aftermath of the Lazy Day, as seen in [chapter 14](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/4872357). The plan at first was for it to have noticeable, worldwide effects...but the narrative wasn't clicking, and finally I realized that chapter 14 was way too early to get the whole rest of the world involved. (We ended up seeing worldwide consequences in [chapter 46](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7748144), with the reality bomb. Much better timing.)

"I came out better than a lot of people."

"Really? Who?"

That gives Carlos a start. "The ones I told you about this morning. Remember? The plane crashes?"

Most of the effects of the crisis were limited to the Night Vale area — the power outages, the weakening of gravity, the people who lost so much energy their hearts and lungs stopped — but the communication failures, those went global. Phone and Internet records have pinpointed a period of just under eleven minutes when their traffic dropped nearly in half. Three planes are known to have crashed when they lost contact with their control towers at exactly the wrong time.

And those are just the deaths that can be most easily tabulated. There's no solid data on how many lives were lost because nobody could reach 9-1-1 during that window, how many....

"Forgive me, Carlos, it sounds like I didn't realize how affected you were. Is this one of those dangers you think of as unusual? Do motor vehicles not crash, outside of Night Vale?"

"No, they do," admits Carlos, as Cecil takes his hand. "But this is the first time where maybe...if I'd been faster...they wouldn't have. And there's no telling how close we cut it, how much worse it would've been if I'd been a minute later...."

 

__~/*\~__

 

Most of the team was in the ordinater room when she left, and most of them are still there now. Perle figured out how to hook up the overhead projector to a TV feed of ACN. Last night the team sent them an offer to do an interview, and Keith drew the short straw; he should be in the city by now, prepared to say accurate-but-reassuring things to one of the network's camera crews.

Sherie comes in just in time to hear the latest well-coiffed anchor saying, "A representative for the College of Bishops has announced that yesterday's worldwide communications disaster is a sign. He urges people all over the world to repent their sins and accept the guidance of the Lord, or, as with the ancient Egyptians in the book of Genesis, more disasters will —"

"Can somebody mute that?" complains Quentin, jerking his head toward the screen and making his thick poufs of hair bounce. Perle's gecko daemon scampers across the desktop and hits a button, and the sound shuts off. " _Thank_ you."

"Has it all been like that?" asks Sherie, sitting down at a free machine. Her mongoose daemon scampers up her leg to sit next to her keyboard as the TV cuts to a man in a clerical collar speaking in front of a podium. "You would think they could've found someone more informed to talk to by now."

"They played a statement from CERN earlier," says Nirliq from the seat next to Quentin. The desk between them, as usual, is piled with printouts, notes, and the latest neatly-labeled electrum lense prototypes. "Wasn't long. It boiled down to _don't put this on us, we didn't do it._ "

"And the rest has been Church officials taking advantage of people's fears," adds Quentin, "and a bunch of so-called experts who obviously have no idea what they're talking about."

"Not 'obviously'."

Everyone turns to Omero.

The young man and his starling daemon both sit to attention. "All due respect," he says. "I don't doubt your results when it comes to Rusakov particle physics."

"But...you don't always understand what makes them valid," guesses Sherie. "You're a biologist, not a physicist. I bet Quentin here keeps rolling his eyes at lines of jargon that don't sound any more indecipherable than some of what you hear us say around the chapel."

"That's right, ma'am."

Quentin sighs. "Okay, I can understand how some of them might have sounded plausible to a lay person." He switches from English to Spanish, where he can complain more quickly: "But the news networks oughta run them by someone with a degree before letting them run their mouths on-air! Is that so much to ask?"

"It shouldn't be, you're right," says Nirliq soothingly. Her colobus daemon even pets the fur of Quentin's flying squirrel.

"There he is!" exclaims Nirliq. "Quick, get the sound back!"


	3. Desert Bluffs Henriette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For about 30 seconds I considered having Zariya Thiébaut (introduced in [chapter 7](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/4310454)) be a POV character. But all the necessary plot points in Desert Bluffs could be discovered by other characters (Dana through astral projection, Carlos through his visions with Carlo Raimondi, eventually Tamika through her life-changing field trip with Kevin), and it would wreck the pacing and the mystery if we were in the head of a high-level Strexcorp operative who knew all their plans from day one. So this scene is all that ever got written.

_Desert Bluffs._

The bullet hits the older scientist square in the eye, spraying red across the black marble tiles. His own shot goes wild, punching straight through Zariya Thiébaut's monitor and the glass pane of the window beyond.

"That's coming out of your death benefits," says Zariya coolly, before shooting him in the heart. His daemon, a frantically flapping toucan, poufs out of existence as his body hits the floor.

"Should we lay a claim to his skull?" asks her own daemon, the handsomest black-maned lion you ever did see, from his sprawled position in the sunbeams coming through the windows. "Or do you think we have enough mugs?"

Zariya shakes her head. It's one thing to decorate your office with the remains of worthy competitors that you beat out for a job, and quite another to start throwing in subordinates you were disciplining, who wouldn't even be missing those limbs in the first place if they hadn't decided to fight back. "Anyone who thinks he can falsify data in my division and get away with it is too much of a pinhead to be worth it."

Between calling the janitorial staff to requisition a cleanup and filling out the form on the internal company server to have a new monitor delivered, Zariya is almost late to her next research appointment. Even the extra speed of the senior-staff elevators doesn't entirely make up the lost time. She sweeps back her dark hair to scan in, and enters the lab to find her subject already on the table, with one of the severed local scientists attaching the electrodes to his head.


	4. Christmas Vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long rejected sequence from Carlos's family vacation, in which Carlos, Cecil, and the family go to see a live show at the theater...and Cecil discovers (via Khoshekh on the alethiometer) that Carlos has a couple of stalkers actively pursuing him. Would've happened around [chapter 21](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/5390609).
> 
> Very dramatic! Cool action sequences! Again, though, it would've led to consequences that were too monumental to walk back. Too much of the action would've made the news, there would've been reporters on their lawn...and Carlos wouldn't have stayed in the house with his nieces and nephews for the rest of the vacation, not after armed hostiles got this close to him.

Priority one is keeping the family, especially the kids, out of danger. Priority two is taking out the mystery stalkers. Cecil confirms that "none of them are going to start shooting in a dark theater, they are assassins _at worst_ , not psychopaths," so Mamá and Papi take Rosa into the auditorium, Lena goes to round up her husband and their other daughter and do the same, and Azalea takes on the mission of finding security (with orders not to let on that Cecil is the observant one) while Cecil takes Carlos on a casual stroll.

"Definitely tailing us," he murmurs in Spanish as they turn a corner and head through a door marked STAFF ONLY. They move with casual confidence, and everyone is busy now that it's ten minutes to showtime, so nobody stops them. "One of them is much less competent than the other two. I'm not sure they're affiliated."

"I'm not sure if I want the Magisterium to be the more-competent group, or not," grumbles Carlos.

After a few false starts, Cecil finds an EXIT sign, and they head down a short, dingy stairwell and push through into the cold night. Cecil immediately shivers and zips up his coat. "Ugh, this _place_. Not cold enough for the snow to stay when it falls, and too cold for everything else! That tree, over there, does it still have snow on it?"

Carlos gathers Isaña into his well-padded arms and follows Cecil's gesture. It's a scraggly fir planted in a dirt-filled circle carved out of the pavement: the one nod to aesthetics out here at the back of the building, where everything else is just ugly bricks and parking lot. "Sure does."

"Great! Come here." Cecil leads them to the tree, gestures for them to stand in place, then says, "It might help if you close your eyes? I don't know, I've never done this with snow before."

Baffled, Carlos obeys.

There's a shower of frozen powder across his face and Isaña's front as Cecil shakes one of the boughs of the tree in their direction, making a soft clicking noise deep in his throat.

"Did you just do the nothing-to-see-here spell on me?" whispers Carlos, not wanting to open his eyes in case he jinxes something.

"I did!" exclaims Cecil. "And it worked! I was afraid it would be harder with snow, because that's not how I learned, but it's easier! Now that you have some protection, do you want to sneak off and find somewhere empty and well-guarded to wait this out, or would you rather come back in and help me shake down suspects?"

 

__~/*\~__

 

They find the first stalker — _the incompetent one,_ Cecil whispers — in the corridor they snuck down, still lurking around the STAFF ONLY door. It's a guy, maybe in his late twenties, with a goatee and a leather jacket. His daemon is a starling, not the species with the glossy violet sheen of Omero's, just brown with a few streaks of white.

Cecil loiters near the mouth of the corridor to run interference if anyone else comes their way, while Carlos walks right up to his stalker: completely unnoticed until he twists the guy into a headlock and pins him against the wall.

"Hi there," says Carlos brightly, as the possibly-assassin yelps and the phone he'd been holding hits the carpet with a thunk. "You should really rethink your harassment of Carlos Ramirez."

"I — I wasn't doing anything wrong, man!" croaks the stalker. "It's a public place! I know my rights!"

A minute of confused interrogation later, and Carlos finally puts it together. This poor guy isn't Magisterium, or Strexcorp, or any other organization that might be out for his blood. He's just some idiot with no respect for privacy who spotted Carlos and thought he could take some video and sell it to the news. Or gossip blogs. Or the highest bidder.

Carlos is not going to let himself be auctioned off any more than he would Cecil.

Isaña commandeers the would-be paparazzo's phone, dragging it far enough away that his brown starling can't reach. "Different OS than mine," she reports. "I could try to puzzle it out, rifle through all the possible photo and video directories, and hope I found everything and managed to delete it for good...or I could visit the website of a certain municipal library system."

Carlos's daemon is clever and devious and he loves her to pieces. "Let me know when it loads."

The guy in the leather jacket whimpers a little, his daemon hopping in place with anxiety. Honestly, part of Carlos would like to shove him around a little more just to make sure the point is driven home, but it seems like he's had the fear of angels and/or invisible bodyguards put in him already.

"Done," announces Isaña. "You want something to pass around the Internet, stick to this: do not stalk Dr. Ramirez. He is under the best and most loyal protection imaginable."

 

__~/*\~__

 

Back out in the lobby, there are a couple of uniformed officers putting cuffs on a muscular woman with a fox daemon. Another, next to them, is interviewing a furious Azalea about the last time this happened: "It was in New Amsterdam, a few months ago, and I can get you the exact date, because it was during that big physics conference with all the protestors...."

The rest of the area is mostly empty. All the guests have made it into the theater.

Meanwhile, Khoshekh has been busy with the alethiometer, and Cecil, in four-eye, gives a rapid summary under his breath. "No other threats here but the ones I've spotted. A small radical council within the Magisterium got a tip from someone in this establishment's ticketing department. The other guy is an opportunist who got lucky. You should contact Harvard and have their publicity firm handle the media about this, rather than trying to do it yourself — if they play this _very_ well, the public shaming will cause a political upheaval in the Church itself, with power going to the moderates. Meanwhile, I — oh! You're beoming noticeable again."

Carlos and Isaña both duck into the shadow of the nearest decorative column.

"It's okay, the second Magisterium agent has lost your trail," murmurs Cecil. "Go show your sister you're okay, and then stay with the police. I will be right back."

Carlos's nerves jump — he doesn't like the sound of this, not at all — but he trusts the alethiometer, and even if he didn't, he has faith in Cecil — who is already walking away, as quickly as possible without drawing attention, so Carlos only has time to hiss a short phrase after him: " _Mun ráhkistan du!_ " 

(It's from the language Josie used to speak with her daemon, and, every once in a while, with Cecil. Carlos is never going to be fluent, but he took the time to memorize a few useful lines.)

Cecil does a little skip on his next step, pulling his phone out of his bulky coat pocket and holding it to his ear. "Uh-huh? Yes! Yes, I love you too."

 

__~/*\~__

 

Carlos has every intention of staying with the police. Just like Cecil told him to.

Then a gunshot goes off inside the theater, and no force in all the worlds can stop him from sprinting inside.

The lights are still up, the curtains still down; at least two-thirds of the seats are full, and while some people turn to look toward the noise as Carlos bangs through the doors, most of them are watching the stage. The sound must have come from there — so people are assuming it's an effect, a prelude to the show.

Without warning two figures come flying through the curtains — from high enough that they must have been on some kind of platform before one of them jumped, or was pushed — and crash-land on center stage, wrestling all the while. One is Cecil, his coat abandoned somewhere, the tails of his dinner jacket fluttering in his wake. Something flashes between them. A panicked blue jay daemon flaps overhead. There's blood on Cecil's shirt.

"Everybody, get down!" yells Carlos, then ducks behind the nearest row of seats as the first few cops come in behind him.

He's the only one.

On a TV show, everyone would already be screaming and running by now. In the dreams of a disaster planner, they would start walking calmly toward the nearest exit. But humans are social animals at heart, which means that unless someone with way more apparent authority than Carlos comes along, everyone is going to keep assuming this must not be a real emergency based on the fact that nobody _else_ is panicking.

On stage, a bone snaps — no telling whose — then Cecil has the handgun, holding it by the barrel and clocking the other man across the side of the head, once, twice.

The blue jay daemon drops to the stage with a thud.

Carlos raises his head just enough to look. Cecil sits up, one knee on the limp assassin's back, breathing hard. His hands flash over the gun, unloading it with firm Boy Scout efficiency and setting it on the floor. There's even more blood all over his poor white shirt than Carlos realized — that cravat is probably ruined — but if he's injured, it doesn't stop him from getting smoothly to his feet as the cops finally, _finally_ get close enough to help.

"Dear viewers," he declares, in a warm and welcoming voice that fills the auditorium. Everyone but Carlos must immediately assume he's had a microphone taped to his lapel the entire time. "Welcome...."

A sweeping bow.

"...to the _theater_."

The crowd goes _wild_.


	5. Culture Clashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much-shorter rejected scenes from Carlos's family visit. Ten-year-old Rosa wants Mr. Cecil to do a spell for her, and there's a moment of culture clash. Later, Carlos learns what he's missed by never googling himself.

Here's one thing Carlos got right: he warned Cecil not to do any magic, witch-lore, or secret Boy Scout techniques without asking him first. Exemptions for life-or-death emergencies, and absolutely nothing else.

So Cecil, thank the beams, does _not_ whip out a knife and start slicing runes into Carlos's niece's arm.

He brings Rosa into the den, where Carlos is in the middle of an email conversation with some of his non-Night-Vale colleagues about experiments that this world's Large Hadron Collider might want to try, and _asks_ , very politely, if he can whip out a knife and start slicing runes into Rosa's arm.

"No. No. Absolutely not. Out of the question."

"I know she's never done this before," says Cecil placatingly, keeping to the English that the kids understand best, "but I know my blood vessels, I got re-certified for basic safety earlier this year. All she'd have to do is hold still, and you don't have to be an expert on spells to do that, right, Rosa? And obviously we'd sterilize everything — I swear, I would be as careful as if she were my own sister's child —"

"Cecil, none of that is the point!"

(In the back of his mind, Carlos reflects that, given Cecil's memory issues, it's entirely possible that he _has_ a sister. Maybe there's a whole menagerie of long-lost Palmero siblings out there somewhere.)

"Of course you would be careful. I know that." Switching to Spanish, he continues: "It's a cultural thing. Maybe it isn't logical, but I need you to trust that I know what I'm talking about, okay? If you put any cuts on any of my nieces or nephews, for _any_ reason, you will lose the sympathy of almost every adult in this house."

 

__~/*\~__

 

Again, Carlos feels like everyone's looking at him. "I didn't mean to harass her! It's just — Azalea, you remember the conference last summer, the kind of people who had me followed. And what are the odds we'd run into a harmless admirer? How many of those can there be?"

A weird silence. Half of it is people being busy with their menus, but the other half....

Teenage Dawn is the one who puts the weirdness into words: "Uncle Carlos, do you just...never google yourself, or what?"

"Of course you have fans. Why do you think the Magisterium bothers tailing you?" adds Azalea. "If everyone in the world thought you were a hack, they wouldn't care what you said or did. You're a threat because too many people are ready to believe you. Because they like you. Because you have _fans_."

"I'm a threat because what I'm saying is the truth," protests Carlos. "And because the fact that I know a few angels is backed up by too many witnesses to brush off as a hoax. And maybe it helps that I have a twelve-year research career with an impeccable ethics record...but nobody ever got a, a fandom, or groupies, or whatever, just by doing good research."

"Perhaps not," says Cecil. "Which explains why it wasn't a Carlos Ramirez Impeccable Ethics Record Appreciation photoset that had fifty thousand notes last time I reblogged it."


	6. Henriette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extra Henriette scenes. One bonding over exposition with Köhler. One extended world-of-the-dead scene from [chapter 28](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/5900915). (This is why Intern Vanessa is in [the daemon reference list](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/205307.html#daemons), though she never appears in the story proper.) And one callback that would've gone in [chapter 40](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7075031), with Carlos talking to his parents before his mother's surgery.

_one of the DB strexcorp physicists has been in contact with me for a while now. thiebaut, the one carlos talked at until she went away._

_nothing extensive, she texts me sometimes. chatty updates. casual mentions of things they're working on. like she thinks she can convince me we're friends. ofcourse I am 100% suspicious, assume everything is cacluated to mess w/ my head. No idea what her endgame is._

_but maybe if I pretend to warm up to her, I could find out._

_If she's keeping as close an eye on me as I think, she'll know what hapepned today. and if she thinks I'm starting to feel desperate/isolated, it won't seem too suspicious for me to have a change of heart re: getting within 50ft of her._

_so, questions for you are:_  
1) good plan?  
2) do I tell other people on the team? maybe just Carlos? maybe nobody? 

"I have some critical comments to offer, yes," says Köhler. Taking the laptop, he begins typing. _How did Dr. Thiébaut come to focus on you like this?_

Henriette snorts. "Wish I knew."

(If she tells him about her inglorious incident of drunk-dialing, he's never going to agree to have her back on this.)

 _She must believe you are vulnerable to manipulation,_ types Köhler. _Can you assure me that she is wrong? Was your breakdown today calculated to play to her assumptions, or was it genuine?_

Henriette takes the ordinater back. _sorry to say that was real. but it doesn't mean I'm 'vulnerable" to deciding to work for strexcorp. I'm_

Her fingers hesitate over the keys, then plunge ahead.

_an alcoholic, not an idiot._

 

__~/*\~__

 

Henriette nearly trips over her own non-feet. "Who — what — where did you — Dana?"

The other ghost — a teenage girl who does indeed look very much like NVCR's former intern, although her hair is relaxed flat and dyed with highlights of subtle auburn — looks up at her with blank brown eyes. "I don't know a Dana."

It's just enough of a puzzle to take the edge off Henriette's soul-deep desire to keep moving. "Then who are you? And what in the world are you doing here?"

"My name is Vanessa. Vanessa Crane. I'm praying. Did you ever worship a Smiling God?"

"No."

"Neither did I," says Vanessa wistfully. "I resisted, I defied...so my daemon was taken away, and then I died. And now I am here. I have been here for months now...years, maybe. Get enough minutes and you have days, have months, have years, have an endless and unchanging afterlife. I never thought hell was real, but now I know without a doubt that it is. So I pray. Penance must equal salvation. It must! Because nothing else has."

Gosh, she's chatty. "This isn't hell," Henriette tells her. "Far from it. I think you'd better come with me."

Vanessa gets to her feet, warily hopeful. "I suppose _there_ can hardly be intrinsically worse than _here_."

"Oh, it'll be better. What was your daemon's name?"

"Orestes. He was a cockatrice."

"My Clotère was an alpine marmot," says Henriette, as they walk together toward the blank arc of the horizon. "And we're going back to them."

 

__~/*\~__

 

They talk a little longer. 

"Listen," Carlos says at last. "If — heaven forbid — if something does go wrong."

"Which it will not," says Mamá. "I am an excellent candidate for surgery, all the professionals have said. In fine physical shape, especially for my age, with only the one small exception."

For the first time all morning, Papi speaks up. "But we never know what else could happen. Go ahead, son."

"Thanks, Papi." "This is for you too. If something goes wrong, and you get across the final shore, and there are things you wish you'd asked...tell the guardians to take you to the people who died in Night Vale or Desert Bluffs, in Lyra's world. Tell them you're looking for Henriette Gaillard. She can fill in almost anything you want to know."


	7. University of What It Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonus exposition from [chapter 32](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/6109883), where the University of What It Is archaeologists are introduced. Cut for length, and because I figured it would be more straightforward to have the UWII visitors turn down Strex on their own, rather than bringing it up to the Night Vale crew and rehashing all the relevant exposition.

The event President Sultan spun as a "theology emergency" appears, at first, to be more of a translation emergency. Three archaeologists appeared in the middle of one of NVCC's lecture halls (in the middle of a seminar on Technology With Finger Quotes), and none of them know more than a few words of Spanish.

Also, the telepathic sentient rock directed them to stay in the same room as a shaking, whistling cabinet that appears to be snacking on live guinea pigs.

They're clustered against the far wall when Carlos arrives. None of the college's employees speak enough Outsider to talk them down from abject human terror.

Carlos took off the pressure garment on his face for the visit. He doesn't think about how the scar might be startling until he's already there, but one of the archaeologists — an Afro man with dreads and a hedgehog daemon — has a similarly impressive line across the forehead, so maybe it won't be a big deal. "Can you give us the room?" he asks the whistling cabinet, and it clumps out of the office.

"Please, let us go home," says the shakiest of the three, a silver-haired Cathay man with a jewel-toned beetle on his shoulder. "Dr. Kayali's phone isn't working, but if you'll just let us call a cab...."

"If that's the best way to get you home, we'll get you one," says Carlos. He's got a spyglass in his pocket in case they refuse to trust him, but he's hoping to get by without it. "Where are you three from?"

 

__~/*\~__

 

Now standing in his native scrub again, Charles turns back to them. "Did you say Strexcorp?"

Carlos is suddenly on alert. So is Tamika, though she might not have understood much more than the company name. "Yes."

"Any chance that's short for Strexcorp Synernists, Inc?"

In a split second Tamika has her slingshot trained on him, a heavy stone drawn back. The silver-haired archaeologist outright whimpers and hides behind his taller colleague.

"Hold your fire!" exclaims Carlos — forgetting to switch out of English, but the tone of voice and the sharp gesture are enough for Tamika to put it together. "Cecil?"

Cecil is already spinning the needles. "Strex has an outpost in their world. Small. Not advanced. They have been outsourcing the local research rather than doing it themselves. Our friends here have not accepted any equipment or partnerships from them. Not yet."

Charles raises one hand in surrender (the other is holding his hedgehog daemon against his chest). Dr. Kayali takes over the conversation, patting the air in a placating motion. "And they're evil, you say."

Pulling out the spyglass, Carlos extends it and hands it to Charles. "Look at me through this. Got it?"

A gasp tells him that yes, Charles is seeing the brilliance of Rusakov particles in realtime.

"Strex drugged and severed five colleagues of mine to keep them from asking too many questions, and killed a sixth while she was on a rescue mission. They'll do the same to anyone if it serves their purposes. Do not work with them, don't accept anything from them, undermine them if you can do it safely and stay the hell away from them if you can't."

"Tell them about Strex looking for Palmeros," puts in Tamika.

Carlos nods, and translates. "They have a special interest in controlling people who look like Cecil. They know somebody with his face is going to have special abilities they need, so they're going after every one they can find. If you ever meet one in your world...I don't know if you'll end up feeling the same way that I feel about mine, but no matter what happens, for heaven's sake, protect him."

Wordlessly, Charles holds the spyglass so Dr. Kayali can see through it too. When she's satisfied, he tosses it back to Carlos. "Your turn. Look at us."

Carlos does.


	8. Neharah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fragments of a scene from some time between [chapter 38](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/6883880) (Emmanuel returns with Neharah) and [chapter 41](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7154252) (the battle for Night Vale begins). Carlos meets Emmanuel's daemon in peacetime. Cut because at this point they hadn't had the "now that you've seen what Tamika can do with the Knife, you can understand why I had you kidnapped" talk, and there was never a fitting time to write all that out without unbalancing the pacing. (Instead, Carlos meets Neharah during a rescue mission, where Emmanuel tells himself he can put off The Talk until the danger is over.)

The gas station is on a corner, and there's a Taco Bell right next door, with a pay phone out back. Which is strange, because nobody uses pay phones any more. Stranger still is the fact that there's someone fiddling with it anyway: a man in a tan jacket, carrying a deerskin briefcase.

There's complimentary window-washing stuff, plus a salve to use if your vehicle has minor bumps and scrapes. Carlos soothes a bite mark on the hood, keeping one eye on the pay phone.

 

"Are we...supposed to be talking to him?" asks Isaña under her breath. "I feel like...did something happen?"

Maybe? But it's too late now, the man is coming over. "Carlos. Hey there. You, ah, you wouldn't happen to remember much about the last time we spoke, would you? It's okay if you don't. It was a couple weeks ago."

It's a disarmingly weird thing to be sheepish about. "I don't, no," says Carlos. "My most recent notes are about your daemon being...well, trapped. In another world. But I don't know exactly how I learned that. Were we at the chapel? Or...it couldn't have been at the station, could it?"

"It was at Josie's," prompts the man. "You managed to get my name right."

"I did? Seriously?" That sounds like a monumental achievement that Carlos really ought to remember. "Was it...hang on a second...it's on the tip of my tongue. Give me a hint?"

"Emmanuel -------," says the man.

"That's it! Emmanuel something."

 

He lifts one of the sides of his jacket's folded-over collar, revealing a shape on the tan fabric underneath. "And, on a tangent...you can update your notes."

Carlos catches his breath. "That's —"

The little housefly daemon lifts into the air and does a circle around Carlos's head. "You weren't kidding about the hair," she buzzes in a tiny voice, almost drowned out by a car pulling into the road. "Did we know Cecil had a thing for hair?"

"We sure figured it out," says the man dryly.

"You _found your daemon_ ," breathes Carlos. He remembers returning to Isaña after being trapped in another world for just a few minutes; he can't imagine how monumental this must be. "But — you're not wearing your lanyard! Did you lose it? Do you need another?"

"Threw it out. Don't need it." The man swings his deerskin briefcase up to hold it flat, and undoes the latches. "My daemon wouldn't fit in that protective case anyway."

He flips open the hinge.

The briefcase is _full of flies_. Clinging to the edges. Crawling all over each other. As Carlos watches, a stream of them — a swarm-of-flies daemon — flows out of the compartment and spirals around Emmanuel. Three of them break away to buzz around Isaña, while the rest land on his head and the sleeves of his jacket like a thick black outline on a cartoon character.

"Carlos, these are Neharah. They're my daemon." He uses the feminine-plural pronoun, but _daemon_ stays singular. "N-----h, this is Dr. Carlos Ramirez, sometimes known as Carlos _el Téologo Experimental_ or _Carlos Perfecto_ , and his daemon Isaña."

 

"I've never imagined anything like them. Are they connected to each other like a daemon is to a human, or do they completely share a mind? Do they share senses, too? Is there a limited range that their...bodies...units...embodiments can go from each other, or could they spread out over the whole world if they felt like it?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record:
> 
> Neharah's consciousness works a lot like [chapter 51 spoiler], who can be in multiple places at once. Still technically a single mind, but with much more attention to spare than most people have, and very good at using it for multitasking.
> 
> Their senses function as if they're a single body. Every eye sees what it's pointed at, every leg feels what it's resting on, and the mind puts all the data together to make an overall picture of the environment.
> 
> There's a limit to how far their units can get from each other. It's a really big limit. You couldn't send one unit on a spy mission miles away from the rest of them, but they could spread out over a football field, or several floors of a house, easy.
> 
> Also: a few flies here and there can get squished without major damage to Neharah-as-an-entity. It's like the equivalent of stubbing your toe. They have a [spontaneous generation](http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Spontaneous_Generation.php) process going on, so as long as they don't lose too many at once, they'll be replenished back to the original level over time.


	9. Perle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extended version of the scene from [chapter 41](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7154252), when everyone's preparing for battle and Sherie invites Perle to hang out in the basement shelter. Cut down for pacing.

"I only ask because I thought you might like the company," stammers Sherie. "Also, because of the dangerous...well, you know...."

"Weather pattern?" suggests Perle. She's a good twenty-five years younger than Sherie, and yet she's so much better at subterfuge. Part of it is the deadpan expression, as if everything she says is too mundane and depressing to be anything but true. "The one you think might be moving in later."

"Yes! That's what I mean. I wouldn't want you getting hurt, if the, the weather, gets bad." Trying to lighten the mood, Sherie adds, "Besides, if something happens to you, poor Keith will be the only heterosexual left on the team, and that won't be easy on him."

"Won't it?" asks Perle. "Because I never said I was heterosexual."

"...Oh." Sherie has managed to stop making that assumption about Night Vale locals, but when it comes to fellow Outsiders, she still expects them to be...(she mentally scrubs out the word _normal_ ). "Can I ask...what are...?"

"Categorically not interested."

"Ah," says Sherie, and decides the safest thing to do is shut her mouth.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Perle prompts, "This is usually the point when people say 'oh my, a pretty girl like you? Such a waste'."

"Do they? That's awfully rude of them," stammers Sherie. "All I was thinking was...you've bonded with a mayoral candidate too, but it's Hiram McDaniels, who is literally an eighteen-foot-tall five-headed dragon, presumably with, um, with normal reptilian _proportions_ , so the fact that certain feelings will never come into it is, well, probably for the best?"

The younger woman doesn't look amused. Oh, lord, Sherie's gone and put her foot in it now. That was inappropriate, that was much too personal, she never should have....

"...yes, probably," says Perle. Oh, thank goodness, she's not offended, that's just her face. "Should I bring anything down other than work? Snacks? I assume a radio...."


	10. Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extended exposition over breakfast from [chapter 45](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7537592). Cut because, even though I like some of the jokes, it was too much chatter for too little plot advancement.

Sherie rolls out of bed with a hangover, and trudges to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. They still don't have anbaric power; she has to get a can of fire out of the cupboard. She ends up at the table staring at the wall for an unknown length of time, willing the aspirin to kick in.

She was the first one in the house to get up. (Quentin doesn't count, since he never went to sleep, just turned into this adorable little blue-cheeked bird and flew off to spend the rest of the night doing angel business.) The next one is Seth, up in time for school in spite of everything. Sherie hands him a wad of cash on a scale normally reserved for birthdays, and tells him to buy whatever he wants for breakfast and lunch, treat himself with the rest, and enjoy the air-conditioned classrooms.

Carlos appears in the kitchen after the bus leaves, which makes this the first time Sherie's laid eyes on him since Monday morning. He's not as badly injured as Perle, but he's visibly favoring one leg. "Thank the imperfect heavens, we have coffee. Will you share? I'll make waffles."

"No, you won't," says Sherie.

"What? Sure, I'll...." Carlos opens the fridge, and gets his first look at the complete absence of milk, eggs, and butter. "...oh. Right."

"Toast," pipes up his armadillo daemon. "We can make toast."

There's plenty of bread in the house; the team can't agree on a single favorite wheat alternative, so they have loaves that are oat-based, chickpea-based, and almond-and-tapioca-based. Carlos toasts slices of each, and slathers them with jam, honey, and chopped fruit. Sherie texts Nirliq, the only person asleep in the other house — Perle crashed in the living room rather than trying to walk — and she raids its cupboards to produce several bottles of toppings intended for their long-ago-melted ice cream.

Nirliq also brings her laptop, prompting Carlos to say, "By the way, today is Experimental Theology Amnesty Day. If it isn't a direct order from the Book Club...or on-air from Fey or Cecil, or a call from Dana or Maureen, or anyone else who would need us for the war and recovery efforts...we're not doing it. Any deadlines that get missed, so be it."

"Oh, thank goodness," sighs Sherie.

"That's all well and good for field work," protests Nirliq, "but I'm supposed to finish a dissertation at some point this year. And my advisor is running out of patience."

Carlos sighs over his oat toast with truffulafruit jelly. "Next time you see Quentin, tell him to go visit your advisor, fill the office and/or classroom with a bright black light, and say something like, 'Be not afraid. I come to bring you good tidings of Nirliq Ashoona, for lo, she is on an important mission for angels. Once we're sure the world is safe, _then_ she can address your concerns about the inclusion of patentable information in her manuscript."

Eventually Carlos takes off with Cecil, leaving Sherie, Nirliq, and Keith sitting around the table mulling over their coffee. (Cecil insists he won't skip work, and Carlos will probably spend the whole day with his boyfriend if the team lets him. As far as Sherie's concerned, they should let him.)

"If I'm not allowed to work, you're not either," says Nirliq, only half kidding, when Keith brings down his own laptop.

"I am simply checking my email," says Keith. "Perhaps I have messages from friends."

"How are you getting online?" asks Sherie. "The network's down."

Keith raises his bushy eyebrows. "This ordinater has legs, walks on its own, and has been known to bite people when it feels threatened, and the feature that confuses you is its satellite-based wireless access?"

"In her defense," says Nirliq, "we've known about all the other features since the day we got here."

Sherie takes a plate of toast and juice out to Perle, and gives Tock the sludge monster a recently-emptied peanut butter jar to crunch on. When she goes back for more coffee, Nirliq and Keith are both hunched over Keith's screen. "Something tells me that's not a cat video you're looking at."

"I have a concerned email from colleagues at Heidelberg," says Keith. "They report heightened readings on the danger meters at several disparate research posts, and ask for our consultation."

"What? How heightened?" Sherie walks around, careful to avoid the tail of Keith's binturong daemon, and squints over his shoulder. It isn't the email open on his screen, it's the password-protected website modeled on INTERMAGNET, only instead of worldwide magnetic readings it collects worldwide danger levels. "Are those the numbers? Those aren't so bad."

"No," agrees Keith. "Those are easily within normal ranges."

"...for Night Vale," finishes Nirliq.


	11. Astral Slapstick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extra opening scene from [chapter 49](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/8146128). Cut for pacing, and because the astral-projection slapstick comedy was killing an otherwise-serious mood.

Carlos's astral-projected ghost shimmers into being on the platform in front of Dana. She's sitting with the mountain to her back, sunlight casting a pooled shadow around her knees. Eustathias sits in her lap, a round pink creature with stubby limbs and big jewel-like eyes.

"The canyon I told you about is inside a cave in this mountain range," says Dana. Eustathias turns into her phoenix form (it's quickly becoming a favorite of theirs, not least because it is unhurt by the Smiling God's cold-burning light) and flutters over to land on the stone wall between two of the angel statues. "My daemon will lead you to the entrance."

Carlos follows Eustathias over...and looks nervously over the edge. "That's a long way down."

"You're a ghost," points out Eustathias. "You have no weight. No mass. All you have to do is think about floating there."

"Rationally, I understand that. In practice...."

"You're only 'standing' on this platform right now because you subconsciously expect to," adds Dana. That seems to be more of a problem with Outsiders than Night Vale natives: expecting things.

Carlos looks uncomfortably at his feet. Points one toe and sweeps that shoe, insubstantial, right through the stone. Tries to put it flat on the ground again, and, with an undignified yelp, ends up plunging right through.

Dana hops out of her body and grabs his arm before he can fall all the way to the next level down.

"Thanks," says Carlos, clasping her forearm, bobbing like a kid in the rec center pool hanging on to their parent for support. "I'm really sorry. If I had known I would need astral-projection flying skills, I would have practiced. Any chance you could, uh, guide me down?"

 

__~/*\~__

 

Carlos did a passable job maneuvering while floating during the lazy day, when he was still subject to recognizable physical properties like buoyancy and momentum. As a ghost, he can't count on any of those things. An experimental theologian may be self-reliant, but a citizen is part of a community, and communities need to support each other.


	12. Bar Code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate plan for Cecil's bar code, from [chapter 50](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/8318923). Had to give it up and admit that this AU's Cecil would never go for it. No matter how much meta-entertainment I would get from riffing on the tattooed!Cecil fanon.

Carlos gives Cecil an extra cuddle, and nuzzles the back of his neck in unbridled adoration.

When he pulls away, the marker blacking out Cecil's tattoo is smeared. Whoops.

They've hung a spare towel over the motel bathroom mirror, so Carlos puts Isaña on the counter and lets her report on the state of his face as he test-scrubs it with one of Cecil's new artisinal soaps. "Are the tattoo removal places in Night Vale still packed?" he asks as he works. "We could try to find a place in Kinlání tomorrow morning, before we drive home."

"We could." Cecil leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed. "Although...I was also thinking that maybe, you know, instead...."

Carlos flicks the last droplets of black-tinted water off his fingertips and stares. Cecil can't be thinking of _keeping_ the bar code. He's felt nothing but hatred and shame toward it since Strexcorp strapped him down and forced it on him. "What are you saying?"

"I was considering having an artist take what's there and...build on it," admits Cecil. "Turn it into something less aesthetically awful? The way some people do with their scars? Not normal, everyday scars, like the ones on my shoulder or my arm or my legs or my chest or my ribcage, but serious ones that they don't like."

"...oh."

"You could help me look at designs," adds Cecil hopefully. "Maybe even give me ideas, if you have any. I like the way you draw on me sometimes. We could talk about that."

"It's your body, not mine. Your decision," says Carlos, toweling off his face with extra vigor so he has an excuse not to meet Cecil's eyes. He's not sure he means it, not in this case, but it sounds like the right thing to say.

"If you don't like the idea at all...."

"Does that matter? If it's what you want...."

"Carlos. I want lots of things." Cecil toys with the empty insect-daemon case still hanging on a lanyard around his neck. (Khoshekh is back in town, at the station.) "In particular, I want to be with you. Indefinitely. Which means I have some responsibility not to do things that will cause you undue distress. If anything on my neck is going to mean you can't kiss it without making your Kevin-related nightmares worse, that's going to be relevant to my decision-making process."

"...how did you know I have nightmares about Kevin?"

Cecil's brow furrows. "Is that not the reason I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find you feeling my teeth?"

Carlos blushes.

"You can look. Is that okay? Go ahead and look at designs, and if there are some you come up with that you really like, you can show me, and I'll...look."

"I can live with that." Cecil follows him out, with a stretch and a yawn. "And if it turns out there's no way you'll be all right with it...that's fine, Carlos, it really is, just try to figure it out sooner rather than later? I don't want to spend another six months wearing scarves everywhere because I'm waiting on you."

This, at least, Carlos has no problem agreeing to. "I won't make you wait that long, _gatito_. I promise."


	13. Hervé and Quentin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extra scientist stuff from during and after the battle for Night Vale. First: Henriette's son was part of the defensive bloodstone formation that began in [chapter 41](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7154252).
> 
> Second: after Quentin's ascension, some extended scientist discussion about the physiology of angels, circa [chapter 44](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7444772). (This one is also an attempt to explain why, back in HDM, the Metatron could have been defeated the way he was.)

As always, a new group of people has rotated into the network the next time Sherie kneels in her bloodstone circle to pray.

But this time its shape is different from the one she remembers. The edges are hooked in place by far-flung anchors, like the ones Carlos described in the Lazy Day net. Some are witches, their minds ice-cold and ancient and immovable, checking in from their homes in Svalbard or Beringland or the northernmost parts of Muscovy and New France.

The others seem to exist on normal human time-scales. There are Night Vale expats, like Hannah Gutierrez on the coast, or the freshman at the University of Michigan who's decided that the bombing of her hometown is a bigger concern than bombing her finals. And there are some who are so, well, _normal_ that Sherie knows they can't be Night-Vale-born. One of Adriana's supervisors at CERN. A man who identifies himself as Carlos's younger brother.

A young man in suburban Narrangansett, whose mind feels incongruously like a houseplant: a thick web of roots in a plot of enriched earth.

 _I saw on the news about the danger levels rising,_ he explains. _So I unpacked the rocks and set them up. Figured I'd pray for answers or whatever. And then, wham, someone invites me to join a world-saving psychic network. Seemed like the right thing to do, you know? Seemed like what my **mother** would've wanted._

The touch of stress, the subtle telegraphing that he's prepared to fight in defense of Henriette's gender if necessary, warms Sherie's heart. _She'd be proud of you. She **was** proud of you. Didn't always understand you, because children are usually baffling to their parents, but she loved you very much._

 _Yeah,_ thinks Hervé Gaillard. _I didn't understand her for a lotta years either, so I guess we're even._

 _If you ever want to visit Night Vale,_ Sherie tells him — _preferably after the reconstruction, of course — I'd be happy to show you around._

 

__~/*\~__

 

"None for me, thanks," says Quentin, when Keith offers to pour him something from a bottle labeled in Modified Sumerian. The newly-minted angel is wearing a sun hat and one of the traditional local ponchos: not for modesty, he's almost invisible anyway, more to remind them all where he is. "It's weird...I remember what it feels like to have a couple of drinks and relax, and I remember liking it, but I don't feel drawn to it at all."

"No more desires of the flesh, only desires of the spirit, hm?" says Nirliq over a glass of wine. She and her colobus daemon are on the floor, relaxing against the couch.

"...um."

Sherie raises her eyebrows. "That was an interesting 'um'."

"The exciting part is, my physiology is corroborating the Belacqua Theorem of Rusakov particle generation," says Quentin hopefully. "Anything that's supposed to create them, I am responding to. I still want to learn things. To discover things. The idea of someone putting real artistic effort into a meal is appealing, even if I wouldn't want to eat it. I'm still looking forward to playing Resident Portal Effect IV when it comes out."

"You say you're responding to _anything_ that creates Rusakov particles?" asks Nirliq. (Sherie has a few prurient curiosities of her own, but isn't far enough enough into her own wine to say so out loud.)

"What else creates them?" asks Perle, the only non-physicist in the group.

"It is an inappropriately personal topic," says Keith crossly. His binturong daemon, curled around the foot of his chair, huffs in disapproval.

"Everyone is hot," says Quentin.

And now that _he's_ brought it up, it's only polite of Sherie to keep quiet and listen, now isn't it?

"I may be kinda freaking out about that part," continues the angel, pulling the brim of his hat down around his invisible ears. "I mean...I'm _gay_. I've known I was attracted to men since I was _seven_. I've gone through all the stress and the questioning and the rejection. I've paid my dues! Then I make one little ascent to a new and higher form of being, and all of a sudden everyone is hot. The men are hot. The women are hot. The nonbinary people are hot. The eighteen-foot lizards are hot. Anything that's a sentient adult, anything that thinks or creates or cares...there is an intelligent cloud in this town that makes its feelings known by dropping dead animals on things, and _I find that attractive_. How is a guy supposed to deal with that?"

"Are you going to be...uh, okay...working in the lab?" stammers Sherie.

"I don't _know_ ," groans Quentin. "Do you think it's this distracting for all angels, or just the ascended-from-mortal-form ones? Because if it's all of them, I have no idea how they managed to run a War, back in the day. All you'd have to do to defeat them is sneak in a couple of really smart people to talk to their commanders, then, while they were distracted, push them off a cliff."


	14. Hair Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dropped set of HDM callbacks from our heroes' preparation for Strex's reality bomb, circa [chapter 45](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7537592). Rejected for pacing and focus — it's a too-long detour for information that ultimately ends up being irrelevant to the problem. No matter how hilarious.

Cecil gets Carlos in the booth, so Carlos can describe the kind of pan-worldly rise in portal-danger levels in careful theological terms. "Listeners, if any of you have information on what this might be, please call in. Fey, can you give them the number?"

It isn't long before Intern Jeremy patches in a call from Serafina Pekkala.

"This level of reality-jolting technology was used during the first War," she tells them. "Another world's Magisterium developed a type of bomb that could shake worlds, and shared the technology with this world's Consistorial Court of Discipline. It could be triggered from one universe to explode in another. The Court tried to use it to blow up Lyra Silvertongue."

"And failed miserably, I hope," says Cecil.

"Oh, yes. Lyra and her companions, including Stanislaus Grumman and Lee Scoresby, were able to redirect the explosion into the Void. Unfortunately, even then, the aftershocks opened so many new tears between worlds that it took the angels decades to close them all."

"Hang on — Stanislaus Grumman?" asks Carlos. "The experimental theologian, the one from Grumman's equations for solar time? Studied at the Berlin Academy, lived and died up North with the Yenisei Pakhtars tribe? What did he have to do with all this?"

"Quite a lot," says Serafina, "considering that he was Will Parry's father."

Carlos's mouth hangs open.

"Caller, you seem to have broken Carlos," says Cecil. "While I try to reboot him, could you give us any more detail on how the explosion was redirected?"

"I should explain how it was directed in the first place. When Lyra was briefly in the Court's custody, an operative cut off a lock of her hair. The hair was placed in the targeting system, and they could aim the explosion at the ends of the hair they had been shorn from. Will found the cut hair on Lyra's head, sliced it off at the root with his knife, and dropped it through a window into the Void."

Cecil catches his breath. "A Strexcorp operative just cut my hair the other day," he says, voice rising in panic, one hand going to the back of his head, where Kevin trimmed it short and professional. "Am I going to have to — oh no, oh beams, they had _Carlos_ prisoner a while back, and they cut some of _his_ hair too! _Is Carlos going to have to shave his head?!?_ "

Carlos pulls himself together. He's still reeling (if Köhler knew about Grumman and didn't _say_ anything, ooh, heaven help him when Carlos sees him next), but only one of them can be incapacitated at a time, and his boyfriend is close to hyperventilating. "Cecil. Nobody is shaving my head."

"You're sure, Carlos? You are _absolutely sure?_ "

"Strex has a dozen Night Vale children in custody _now_. If they're going to use anyone as a biological smart-bomb target, it's going to be one of the people they know we can't get to."


	15. Malone Foundation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate "delivery of the light-blocking material produced in Will's world" scene. Since it ended up happening in [chapter 49](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/8146128) — while Renée was severed — there was a limit to how fun it could be. If it had come at a different time (and Cecil had still had the alethiometer), it would've been more like this.
> 
> (Cary Ramalhete was referenced once in-fic, in [chapter 41](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1794037/chapters/7154252), though not by name. For a borderline-NSFW visual, see [this art of some AU!Carloses](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/And-It-s-Not-Even-Cecil-s-Birthday-531717224). For a worksafe one, look up photos of Ronny Jhuti.)

Carlos, Köhler, and Cecil arrive at Point F — the old oak door in the middle of the desert — a few minutes before the Book Club gyropter and its dragon escorts. Tamika gets out the Knife, and Cecil uses the alethiometer to direct her into opening a window.

The landscape in the next world over is desert with a city visible on the skyline. People are standing by on the other side of the window, guarding six industrial-sized crates of terrible-light-blocking material.

They're also wearing scrubs, gloves, and surgical masks.

A handsome Magadha man with a chapel coat over his scrubs steps forward, hands raised in appeasement. "It's okay! We're not contagious. Other way around," he assures them, with the vowel-shifted future-Brytannian accent Carlos last heard in Will Parry's Oxford. "Some of y'all are carriers for the common cold, and we can't even with that...OMG, is that a dragon?"

Cecil repeats the part about the cold in Spanish for Tamika and the others, already turning dials. "And it is the...truth!"

While they shift the crates from one world to the other, using heavy-loading equipment (on the far side of the portal) and the dragons (on this one), Carlos mutters to Cecil, "You did check to make sure we weren't carrying anything before our Christmas vacation, right...?"

He's not quiet enough, apparently, because the otherworldly scientist answers. "Like we woulda let you in if you were."

Carlos jumps. "You would have — how did you even — what?"

"Oh, sweet summer child," says the other man with a grin. "I'm Malone Foundation. Knowing things is our job!" He hops over the edge of the portal and offers a handshake, which Carlos cautiously accepts. "Cary Ramalhete. And can I just say, wow, this is the greatest. I wanted to say 'sup while you were in Oxford, but obviously _all_ of us wanted to say 'sup, and the readings were v. clear that we had to leave you alone to do your own do, because being mobbed was the last thing you needed."

"Well, um, thank you," stammers Cecil, sounding as flustered as Carlos feels. Apparently, one thing he never checked on the alethiometer was whether anyone else might be using alethiometry to check up on _them_. "I would not have enjoyed that vacation nearly as much as I did if Carlos had been beseiged by admirers. No matter how richly-deserved."

"'Sall good," says Dr. Ramalhete. "You'll be Steve, then."

Cecil's face twists with reflexive _ugh, Steve Carlsberg_ irritation. "No, my name is Cecil."

"Joke, sorry! See, our world's big creation-of-Malone-particles myth is about a couple of baes named Adam and Eve. And about a hundred years ago, religious folks had this meme — it's Adam and Eve, not —"

"— Adam and Steve, oh my _god_ ," finishes Carlos, and dissolves into laughter so hard he has to lean on Cecil for support. He's heard the same "meme" — but he and Cecil did for this world what Lyra did for all the worlds, which means they are literally a same-sex version of — oh, beams, if his sister-in-law only _knew_.

 

(A discussion of the light-blocking material leads Carlos to explain about the umbrellas...then about the discoveries they've made with bloodstones. Ramalhete looks delighted for him. "Your universe is just starting to figure out astral physics? FTW! Your next few decades are going to be _awesome_.")


	16. Kevin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The earliest idea for a de-Strexed!Kevin scene. In which he's snarky when he comes off the drugs, instead of utterly shattered. This was before I'd figured out that the alethiometer would be destroyed — and, related, before I started planning for Fey to co-host the battle coverage — so Tamika brings Cecil with her when visiting Kevin in the Sheriff's secret prison, to ask for help face-to-face.
> 
> Had to drop the language joke because, although it makes sense in English, it wouldn't work in the Spanish that the characters are actually speaking. (Which is a damn shame.)

"...so we could really use your help."

"On the strength of my excellent résumé as Strexcorp's loyal mouthpiece?" asks Kevin. "If you couldn't find anyone more qualified to take the job, you people are in trouble."

"You rebelled against them once," says Tamika. "You could do it again."

"As long as my nephew's health depends on Strex pharmaceuticals, I am a loyal company man. Whether I'm drugged into it or not."

Tamika turns to Palmero. "Can we do something for the nephew? Find him, help him, get Kevin off their strings?"

"Let me check." Palmero turns the alethiometer dials. Kevin can't see him working, obviously, but keeps quiet anyway, like he can sense that something important is going on.

As the needle flicks from symbol to symbol, Palmero's face gets more and more strained.

"I'm sorry," he says at last. "Kevin, I'm so, so sorry. They lied to you."

"You think I would just hand myself over without any evidence?" says Kevin testily. "They didn't lie. The meds worked — Jasper could watch TV we hadn't screened, he could sit through a whole fireworks show without getting triggered — I saw it with my own eyes! You know, back when I still had them."

"The medication stopped the seizures, yes. But there were...side effects. The company kept the details from getting to the public, even to vic...to customers."

"You're making this up."

"Your nephew's gone. He's been gone for years."

"Saying whatever you have to, to get me to cooperate."

"Do you remember doing the live coverage of a protest in your world's Desert Bluffs, right before Strex transferred you to ours? A big demonstration in the center of town? Buildings set on fire, very dramatic?"

"You don't have any proof, you just...what the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"What the...what?"

Kevin sighs, massaging his temples with his hands. "General-purpose swear word. The strongest obscenities in your universe are all religious, right? In my world, the big ones were all sexual. So it's our equivalent of saying 'what the hell'."

Tamika shrugs that off — it's nothing she hasn't heard on TV — but Palmero winces. "Language, please! There is a young person present."

"I will say whatever the hell I want around the Subtle goddamn Knifebearer, because she can fucking deal with it," snaps Kevin without missing a beat. "Finish what you were saying about the protest."

Palmero finishes. It turns out Kevin's sister was one of the protestors, galvanized into action by her son's death a few months earlier. By that point Kevin had fallen out of touch; she didn't know where he lived, and company security wouldn't let her near the building where he worked. The protest got her all the way through the front doors before her life, along with hundreds of others, was confiscated.

Kevin looks sicker and sicker as the story goes on. He must remember reporting on the company-approved version of the battle; he can match up the details he was allowed to know with the ones Palmero is only now revealing.

"Help us take them on," says Tamika, when she's sure Kevin is going to throw up or throw them out (or both) if this continues. "If we defeat Strex once and for all, we can make sure they don't do this to anyone else's family, ever again. You can have justice. You can have —"

"I want my _daemon_ ," bursts out Kevin, voice cracking. "Can you get me that?"

There's a lump in Tamika's throat as she pats Rashi's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Then get _out_."

"Anything we can do, anything that's physically —"

Kevin grabs the nearest pillow and hurls it in their direction. (He's aiming by sound, and not very well; it veers left and lands on the floor in front of Rashi's hooves, so nothing actually hits them but a soft puff of air.) "It'll be the lamp next. Not like it's any use to me otherwise, right? Leave — me — alone!"


	17. Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate possible scenes from [chapter 52](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/8599270). First: Cecil is awake when Dana brings his mother to meet him, so Dana orchestrates the rest of the Palmero reunion.
> 
> Second: a scene that would not have worked for multiple continuity reasons. For one thing, the founding of the Republic of Heaven Multiversal Science Exchange needed to be the final scene. But imagine if Carlos has accepted the directorship while he was still in the hospital...and Steve and Delphine didn't have a spontaneous battlefield proposal.

It's the first time Dana's seen them together in reality, and it strikes her again how much Sohvi looks like her younger son. Same cheekbones. Same eyes. Same way of holding herself when she's not sure how much to reveal.

They don't hug. The first thing they do is shake hands. Then Sohvi touches Cecil's face — gently, like he might ripple out of existence if she moves too fast — and Cecil clasps her other hand to his chest and rests their foreheads together, and Dana has a feeling this is as tender as Sohvi has ever been.

"I'm really glad you're alive," says Cecil weakly. "I understand why you left, now. But I survived, Mom. I grew up, I'm strong, I know how to take care of myself...you don't have to be afraid of losing any more sons. You can stay. Please stay."

"Your brother's not dead," says Dana absently.

Both Palmeros raise their heads. "What?" asks Cecil.

"Not dead," repeats Dana, for what must be the hundredth time. She goes through this patter every time Cecil gives her the chance; she could do it in her sleep. "The spell didn't kill him, it disrupted your ability to perceive his existence. He did manage to follow you back to this world, and his daemon came back earlier this year, and they fought in the battle, and they're right upstairs."

"He's what? _Where?_ " Cecil and his mother exchange shocked looks. "Take us to him!"

"Oh, no you don't! This is longer than you normally remember him, but it still doesn't guarantee anything, and I am not letting you get his hopes up only to crush them again. You are staying right here for at least another half hour, and if you still know he exists, _then_ I'll show you where. That's an order from your Mayor."

 

__~/*\~__

 

"Oh, wow." Janice's gaze sweeps around the little crowd in Carlos's hospital room: her grandmother Cynthia, mother Delphine, almost-stepfather Steve, almost-stepsister Renée, herself, kind-of-uncle Carlos, kind-of-aunt-in-law Azalea, uncle Cecil, father Emmanuel, and grandmother Sohvi. "I have _so much family_."

"Speaking of family," says Steve, turning to Delphine. "We already know what's true, unofficially. We don't need to make it official to make it more true. But sometimes it can be nice."

He clasps one of his girlfriend's hands, and gets down on one knee. Delphine catches her breath.

"Delphine Parnaso Cabrera, will you —"

"NO!" bellows Cecil, shooting to his feet and clambering straight over the bed. "NO, STEVE CARLSBERG, DO NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD!"

Everyone gapes in utter bewilderment as Cecil tackles Steve to the floor. They struggle, a bunch of furniture gets kicked, and Cecil ends up pinning Steve in a flaily, undignified hold, one hand clamped over his mouth.

"Mmph?" asks Steve.

"Cecil, what on earth —" begins Delphine.

Cecil cuts her off with a yell. _"Steve Carlsberg is not getting engaged before I do!"_

"Umph," says Steve understandingly, and quits struggling. Azalea, like a normal person, is still baffled. Everyone else turns expectantly to Carlos.

(From extensive viewing of various normal-world romance movies with his boyfriend, Cecil has gotten the impression that the New Dane tradition is for the taller partner to do the proposing.)

"I — I don't — Cecil, you know that's not legal, right?" stutters Carlos. "You know I _would_ , but —"

Of course Cecil knows; he's glaring at Carlos with furious determination. "You're the director of an interdimensional science program! You get to follow the laws of whatever dimension you want. That is how it works!"

Carlos knows he has no chance of talking Cecil into realizing that's not how it works. "I don't even have a _ring_ ," he says faintly.

Cecil's mother says something in Suomi. Cecil fires back. The only phrase Carlos catches is _haltijani vaalija_.

With a sigh, Sohvi drops something into Carlos's lap.

It's a ring, of course. A silvery steel band, no gems, just a delicate pattern of knotwork and snowflakes etched into the surface.

"Cecil, honey, marry me," blurts Carlos. To hell with the legalities. They can work that out later.

"Yes!" cries Cecil, dropping Steve with a thump and flowing up to the bed, ending up practically in Carlos's lap. The family ring is a little loose on his finger, but he's utterly enraptured as Carlos slips it on. "Yes, of course, oh, _Carlos_ , you've made me the happiest being in the multiverse!"

Someone starts clapping. Carlos doesn't catch who, because he's too busy smiling until it hurts and touching the ring on Cecil's hand and feeling dizzy with joy. And maybe a bit of post-surgery exhaustion. He should probably kick everyone out of here soon. But mostly joy.

Still gazing adoringly into Carlos's eyes, Cecil gives a vague wave in Steve's direction. "Okay. Now you can go."

**Author's Note:**

> And that's it for deleted scenes! Thank you, you've been a great crowd, don't forget to tip your servers.
> 
> Illustrations (non-deleted ones) that have showed up since the end of the story proper:  
> • [Hiram + Perle + Gallivespians](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Dragons-and-Dragonflies-530424835).  
> • [Night Vale Harbor Clan](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Night-Vale-Harbor-Clan-531254495).  
> • A compilation of [all the daemon portraits](http://bicatperson.tumblr.com/post/117977630420/so-many-pretty-people-so-many-handsome-animals).  
> • The full spoilery [Palmero family tree](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Palmero-Family-Tree-Spoilers-531257157).  
> • A group of [sexy AU scientists](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/And-It-s-Not-Even-Cecil-s-Birthday-531717224).  
> • Bonus [Enigma and Caleb omake](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Wild-Night-532538113).


End file.
